Tom Sykes’ challenging British Superbike return continued at Brands Hatch with just one top ten result on the MCE Ducati to his name from round five.

Having placed 13th in Saturday’s eBay sprint, the former World Champion lined up 16th for Sunday’s opener before storming through to gain six positions by lap three. A race-long battle with Danny Kent kept the Yorkshireman busy for the remainder of the 20 laps with Sykes scoring eighth at the flag. It was to be his and the team’s best result of the weekend, however, as a technical issue on his Panigale V4R ruled him out of the final action.

“It has been a difficult weekend for us, and it was a frustrating end when we couldn’t take our place on the grid for the final race,” Sykes admitted on Sunday.

“We had a technical issue in the first race today which we thought was sorted as all the various settings were checked but it reappeared on the sighting lap of the final race, and we couldn’t take part.

“It’s such a shame as we had made some progress in the opening race, and we couldn’t put into effect the changes we had planned so that was doubly disappointing. But we’ll come back stronger and hopefully have some better fortune next time out.”